This book features the contribution of major European research projects on the governance and ethics of Nanotechnology. They focus on the responsible development of nanotechnology and on the understanding of public debate.

This article discusses the issue of social and cultural ‘autotranscendence’ - self-production, creativity - in the debates on self-organization. The point of departure is Cornelius Castoriadis’s idea of ‘self-creation’. First, a schisma between mechanical and ontological modeling is indicated and used to introduce the idea of a ‘creative organization’. This is further discussed in relation to Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s concept of social ‘autotranscendence’ by ‘complex methodological individualism’, with particular respect to the incomprehension of the social. Following Johann P. Arnason’s treatment of (...) the question of cultural articulation in Castoriadis, the article argues that the problem of autotranscendence presents a further problem of self-creation discernible in Castoriadis’s notions of phusis/nomos, living being/human, and constraint/magma. The article closes with a consideration of Duncan Watts, Alberto-László Barabási and Bernardo Huberman’s sketch of a network sociology. (shrink)

Scientists and engineers who extensively use the term “nanomachine” are not always aware of the philosophical implications of this term. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of nanomachine through a distinction between three major paradigms of machine. After a brief presentation of two well-known paradigms - Cartesian mechanistic machines and Von Neumann's complex and uncontrolled machines – we will argue that Drexler's model was mainly Cartesian. But what about the model of his critics? We propose a (...) third model - Gilbert Simondon's notion of concrete machines – which seems more appropriate to understand nanomachines than the notion of “soft machines”. Finally we review a few strategies currently used to design nanomachines, in an effort to determine which paradigm they belong to. (shrink)

A key failing in contemporary philosophy of mind is the lack of attention paid to evolutionary theory in its research projects. Notably, where evolution is incorporated into the study of mind, the work being done is often described as philosophy of cognitive science rather than philosophy of mind. Even then, whereas possible implications of the evolution of human cognition are taken more seriously within the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of cognitive science, its relevance for cognitive science has only been (...) appreciated relatively recently, and the approach still comes in for some major criticism from prominent theorists within the field. This paper explores some of the reasons for this state of affairs and finds that it might have less to do with due consideration and well-founded scepticism about the relevance of evolutionary theory to these disciplines and more to do with historical accident and faulty assumptions on the part of key theorists in these disciplines. It is also noted that where cognitive scientists are taking evolution into account in their work on the mind, they straying more and more into domains that used to fall exclusively under the purview of philosophy of mind as it is traditionally conceived – qualia, consciousness, perception, intentionality and so forth. The point is made that in ignoring the work being done on the evolution of mind, philosophy of mind runs the risk of becoming obsolete. (shrink)

This paper aims to review different discourses within the emerging field of ethical reflection on nanotechnology. I will start by analysing the early stages of this debate, showing how it has been focused on searching for legitimacy for this sphere of moral inquiry. I will then characterise an ethical approach, common to many authors, which frames ethical issues in terms of risks and benefits. This approach identifies normative issues where there are conflicts of interest or where challenges to the fundamental (...) values of our society arise. In response to the limitations of this approach, other commentators have called for more profound analysis of the limits of our knowledge, and have appealed to values, such as sustainability or responsibility, which should, they suggest, inform nanotechnological development (I will define this approach as a “sophisticated form of prudence”). After showing the ways in which these frameworks are limited, I will examine more recent developments in debates on nanoethics which call for the contextualisation of ethical discourse in its ontological, epistemic and socio-economic and political reflections. Such contextualisation thus involves inquiry into the ‘metaphysical research program’ (MRP) of nanotechnology/ies and analysis of the socio-economic, political and historical reality of nano. These ideas offer genuinely new insights into the kind of approach required for nanoethical reflection: they recover a sense of the present alongside the need to engage with the past, while avoiding speculation on the future. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to sketch a preliminary framework for understanding the cognitive basis of the engagement of the mind with the material world. I advance the hypothesis that contrary to some of our most deeply-entrenched assumptions the relationship between the world and human cognition is not one of abstract representation or some other form of action at a distance but one of ontological inseparability. That is, what we have traditionally construed as an active or passive but always clearly (...) separated external stimulus for setting an internal cognitive mechanism into motion, may be after all a continuous part of the machinery itself; at least, ex hypothesi. (shrink)

Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the ‘mechanization’ of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize[1], even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late ‘60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata[2]. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of (...) human cognition to cybernetic systems. -/- The emergence of the world-wide-web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. -/- I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities. (shrink)

This paper argues for the digital interactive installation artwork based on principles of complexity as an interface with the potential to evoke ekspansions in the subjective experience by confronting the user with an idea of abstract thought, created through a conceptual design, and experienced through bodily interaction and contemplative acts at symbolic levels. The claim is, that ideas presented through good artworks based on the coalision of science and technology can potentially create a synthesis between ideas inspired by the philosophies (...) and empiricisms of the physical-material world view, but also of a higher, spiritual dimension, in which new possibilities of knowledge are potentially to be found. The article accepts the thesis of cognition being the cause of evolution, rather than evolution of man being the cause of cognition. (shrink)

Living systems are characterized by unique properties that make them resistant to the ``information-processingperspective'' of traditional cognitive science.This paper details those unique properties andoffers a new theoretical framework forunderstanding the behavior of living systems.This framework leans heavily on ideas fromgeneral systems theory (specifically Bateson'sinteractionist perspective), semiotics, andMerleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The benefits ofusing this framework are illustrated withexamples from two different domains: immunologyand verbal interaction.

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates (...) emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems. (shrink)

About 20 years ago, the ecology of media art practices proliferated in two domains: those that attached themselves to high technology labs or companies like Xerox PARC, and those that took advantage of personal computing to form collectives only loosely coupled to academic institutions or disciplines. In this essay, I closely examine the diverse epistemic cultures and diverse technical, political, and generational interests in such “cyber-anarchist” networks. I sketch the economy of knowledge in recent media arts and technology communities of (...) practice in the wake of Open Source. I use as my lens the experience of creating a responsive media space called the TGarden, with a collective that gathered more than 26 artists and engineers from 11 institutions and 7 nations. (shrink)

Cognitive ecology is the study of cognitive phenomena in context. In particular, it points to the web of mutual dependence among the elements of a cognitive ecosystem. At least three fields were taking a deeply ecological approach to cognition 30 years ago: Gibson’s ecological psychology, Bateson’s ecology of mind, and Soviet cultural-historical activity theory. The ideas developed in those projects have now found a place in modern views of embodied, situated, distributed cognition. As cognitive theory continues to shift from units (...) of analysis defined by inherent properties of the elements to units defined in terms of dynamic patterns of correlation across elements, the study of cognitive ecosystems will become an increasingly important part of cognitive science. (shrink)

According to the majority of the textbooks, the history of modern, scientific psychology can be tidily encapsulated in the following three stages. Scientific psychology began with a commitment to the study of mind, but based on the method of introspection. Watson rejected introspectionism as both unreliable and effete, and redefined psychology, instead, as the science of behaviour. The cognitive revolution, in turn, replaced the mind as the subject of study, and rejected both behaviourism and a reliance on introspection. This paper (...) argues that all three stages of this history are largely mythical. Introspectionism was never a dominant movement within modern psychology, and the method of introspection never went away. Furthermore, this version of psychology’s history obscures some deep conceptual problems, not least surrounding the modern conception of “behaviour,” that continues to make the scientific study of consciousness seem so weird. (shrink)

Complexity sciences have become famous worldwide thanks to several popular books that served as echo chambers of their promises. These consisted in departing from “classical science” defined as deterministic, reductionist, analytic and mono-disciplinary. Their founders and supporters declared that complexity sciences were going to give rise (or that they have given rise) to a post-Laplacian, antireductionist, holistic and interdisciplinary approach. By taking a closer look at their content and practices, I argue in this article that, because of their physics-oriented, computationalist, (...) and mathematical assumptions, complexity sciences have paradoxically produced knowledge at odds with these four tenets. (shrink)

Network concepts are omnipresent in contemporary diagnoses, management practices, social science methods and theories. Instigating a critical analysis of network concepts, this article explores the sources and relevance of networks in Foucault’s social theory. I argue that via Foucault we can trace network concepts back to cybernetics, a research programme that initiated a shift from ‘being’ to ‘doing’ and developed a new theory of regulation based on connectivity and codes, communication and circulation. This insight contributes to two debates: Firstly, it (...) highlights a neglected influence on Foucault’s theory that travelled from cybernetics via structuralism and Canguilhem into his concept of power. Secondly, it suggests that network society and governance are neither a product of neoliberalism nor of technological artefacts, such as the Internet. They rather resulted from a distinct tradition of cybernetically inspired theories and practices. (shrink)

Themes of mastery, domination and power are familiar to any scholar of modern technology. Science is commonly cast as enabling the technological control over both the natural and physical worlds. Indeed, Francis Bacon famously equated scientific knowledge with power itself—stating that ‘knowledge itself is a power’. Bacon’s now ubiquitous phrase—commonly repeated as the banal ‘knowledge is power’—was an attempt to combat three heresies in scriptural interpretation by asserting the conjunction between biblical knowledge and divine power. Opening his critique of the (...) heresies he states: ‘You err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God’. In this sense the equation made between knowledge and power is of cosmic significance for Bacon in that knowledge is fundamentally associated with divine power. This image of scientific knowledge, method and rationality is deeply seductive. In this Baconian mode scientific method is irreducibly associated with human mastery over natural systems and the material world. In this image science and technology are defined as a kind of power over the physical world—the power of knowledge, method and the logos over nature, myth and irrationality. In its original Latin sense—ipsa scientia potestas est—the word that translates in English as simply power is a in fact a specific type of power. Potestas is defined as ‘power over’—with particular resonances with political and juridical traditions in Roman law. That is, knowledge is equated not simply with personal capacity. Rather, knowledge produces the power of mastery, domination and coercion... (shrink)

Over the past decades, self-assembly has attracted a lot of research attention and transformed the relations between chemistry, materials science and biology. The paper explores the impact of the current interest in self-assembly techniques on the traditional debate over the nature of life. The first section describes three different research programs of self-assembly in nanotechnology in order to characterize their metaphysical implications: (1) Hybridization (using the building blocks of living systems for making devices and machines) ; (2) Biomimetics (making artifacts (...) mimicking nature); (3) Integration (a composite of the two previous strategies). The second section focused on the elusive boundary between self-assembly and self-organization tries to map out the various positions adopted by the promoters of self-assembly on the issue of vitalism. (shrink)

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates (...) emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems. Key Words: emergence • mechanism • computer simulation • methodological individualism • social realism. (shrink)

This paper argues that the images evoked in the literature of the Spanish indignados, and other contemporary global justice movements, specifically those of disciplinary and social decadence, a space–time beyond the limits of the possible, obligations across generations, and, ultimately, of universal history as horizon and anticipation, reactivate the legal critique of absolute property that featured so prominently in nineteenth-century accounts of law, civil society, and revolutionary right, and then again in the context of twentieth-century decolonization and revolutionary movements. Insofar (...) as such images can be distinguished from concepts, following a certain reading of the critical tradition against the grain, they pave the way towards the formulation of a systemic critique or a ‘jurisprudence of indignation’, in the wake of the emergence, rise and current crisis of the global market. (shrink)